By Jim Dower: Count me in as one of the few people who thought that former IBF cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek (40-1, 27 KO’s) looked pretty damn good in beating former 2004 U.S. Olympian Jason Estrada last Saturday night at the Prudential Center, in Newark, New Jersey. Adamek, 33, defeated Estrada by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 115-113, 116-112 and 118-110. I agreed with the last judge’s scores. I saw Adamek winning about 10 of the 12 rounds with his better combinations and movement.
Adamek looked like the same fighter he was as a cruiserweight and light heavyweight, showing good speed, combinations and movements. But with that said, if Adamek is serious about fighting heavyweight contender Chris Arreola on April 24th, he needs to insist on the fight taking place at a catch weight of 235 if he wants to have a chance of beating Arreola.
What I saw of Adamek on Saturday night was someone who was troubled by the few right hands that he was hit by from Estrada. The thing is, Estrada is a small heavyweight at only 6’1”, and has no power to speak of. Estrada made things worse for himself by failing to throw many punches during the fight. Adamek had a part to do with that by moving continuously and using a lot of head movement.
However, Estrada just wasn’t throwing enough punches and moved too slowly to land anything. Arreola is obviously a lot bigger than both the 6’1” Adamek and Estrada, standing 6’4’ and weighing 260+. Arreola isn’t shy about letting his hands go, throws with much more power than Estrada and cuts off the ring remarkably well for a fighter his size.
Estrada wasn’t bothered by Adamek’s shots last Saturday night, and you could see why. Adamek, a powerful puncher at cruiserweight and light heavyweight, appears not to have brought his power with him in moving up in weight to the heavyweight division. Although Adamek has done a good job of putting on 20 pounds to fill out to 220, the weight hasn’t translated into having heavyweight power.
If Adamek puts on even more weight for a fight against Arreola, I can’t imagine that having any effect on him being able to punch with more power. In a nutshell, Adamek would be facing a huge puncher like Arreola fighting with blanks. I think Adamek can win if he can run the entire fight and spoil like he did against Estrada with his hit and run style, but Arreola is going to probably bust Adamek up with his big shots sooner or later. Estrada puffed up Adamek’s right eye with the few weak right hands he landed on him.
Arreola will be landing a lot more and with much bigger power. And when you have a fighter like Arreola coming into the bout with a huge 30+ pound weight advantage, which tells me that Adamek is going to be in for some trouble. But Adamek can really help himself if he pushes for the fight to take place at a 235 pound, weight draining catch weight.
If Arreola is forced to melt down to 235, it will probably leave him weakened to the point where Adamek would at least have a chance to win the fight. Without the catch weight, I see Adamek ending up like Arreola’s last opponent, the smallish 220 pound Brian Minto, who Arreola stopped in the 4th round in December.
Minto fought his heart out, yet he was too small and didn’t have enough power to even slow Arreola down. Adamek needs to look at this fight and learn from it. He’s too small to take on a super heavyweight like Arreola and win unless he can get some kind of handicap working for him.
I think Admek is a good heavyweight, and I could see him beating some of the smaller heavyweights like David Haye, Denis Boytsov and Eddie Chambers, but not the super heavyweights like Arreola and the Klitschko brothers. They”ll beat him on size alone. When you’re fighting guys that big, it doesn’t matter how good you are. They’re just too big.
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